


This Is Where We Used To Live

by frozenbullies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Breaking and Entering, Drunkenness, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Modern AU, Moving, Vomit, gratuitous emotions, it ends ok i promise trust me, no edits we die like men, way too many emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 22:17:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frozenbullies/pseuds/frozenbullies
Summary: This had been their house.Him and his father. Boiling well water to make it drinkable, hunting deer to keep the dinged up old deep freezer full, fixing everything with scrap wood and a single toolkit.Him and Shiro. Setting up two different slow wifi networks, reupholstering the furniture when Kosmo ripped holes in it, dancing in their bare feet in the living room.And they painted it FUCKING BEIGE.





	This Is Where We Used To Live

“Broke into the old apartment  
This is where we used to live  
Broken glass, broke and hungry  
Broken hearts and broken bones  
This is where we used to live.”

\---

Well. Keith chuckled breathlessly, looking down at his bare, bloody knuckles and the spray of glass around his feet, flecks in his flannel shirt. That’s one way to do it. He fiddled with the lock and clicked the door open. 

The door swung wide and knocked against the wall hard, taking Keith stumbling with it. He laughed as he caught his balance again. This door had always been a slammer. His dad had built this shack with his own two hands and Keith had dented the wood with the doorknob countless times as a kid, running in and out at breakneck speed to show his dad lizards and cool rocks and god only knows what else. A whirlwind of a child. He brought his dizzy attention to the hand gripping the door handle and only appraised the steady flow of blood with amusement.

Pain was something beyond him at this point. Three whisky sours and a warm beer on a mostly empty stomach had been a bad idea to start with but Matt had been in town for the evening and, hey, they hadn’t seen each other since his and Shiro’s five year college reunion. Keith’s stomach clenched and he steadied himself on the doorway, glass crunching under his boots. The dark room was spinning and he looked at his bleeding hand on the wall to ground himself. 

Wait. 

They painted the walls.

They painted the fucking walls. 

All this good, original, natural hardwood and they’d painted it fucking BEIGE. 

Rage curled in his throat. This had been their house. Him and his father. Boiling well water to make it drinkable, hunting deer to keep the dinged up old deep freezer full, fixing everything with scrap wood and a single toolkit. Him and Shiro. Setting up two different slow wifi networks, reupholstering the furniture when Kosmo ripped holes in it, dancing in their bare feet in the living room. 

And they painted it FUCKING BEIGE. 

Keith wiped the back of his hand on the doorframe and sneered with self satisfaction as it left a red smear on the dumb fucking paint before rubbing the rest on his jeans and looking around as he stepped into the living room. Crisp, new furniture with neat throw pillows. The tv was on the wrong wall and it centered the whole flow of the room in a way that made it look bigger but wrong. A fresh coat of wood stain and wax sealer on the floorboards. A zigzagging navy and white patterned rug. It was all so… modern and glossed over and WRONG. 

They fixed the window that had been broken and boarded up since Keith was 17. Took down the shelves Keith had installed himself that summer he couldn’t find a job. Fixed the hole Keith had punched in the plywood wall leading into the kitchen. 

Shiro had been so scared. 

Keith stumbled into the kitchen and threw up in the sink. New cabinets. Cookie cutter and painted a stupid shade of warm off-white. He bet they didn’t even creak when you opened them. He turned on the faucet, washed the mess away with clean running hot and cold water he didn’t even have to wait to heat up. 

Disgusting. 

He turned around, still leaning on the sink with one arm as he scoured the room with heavy-lidded eyes. They kept the fucking tiny doggie door that had been more of a joke than anything. They kept the fucking mousetrap, wedged under the fridge. They changed everything he’d ever loved about this shitty place. But they kept the fucking mousetrap. 

Keith had no idea why this made him so fucking angry. 

He futzed with the lock on the backdoor, just as sticky and stubborn as it had always been and he didn’t need to justify to himself why that made him feel marginally better. He threw it open with a clatter and stumbled out into the clear, open air. It was still the same view. Same open expanse of desert that Keith still knew like the lines of his own palm, the lines of his own heart. Shiro had said it was too empty, that it spooked him hearing the coyotes howl and yip even if he couldn’t really ever hide the fact that he always thought it was funny when Keith howled back. 

Keith took a sharp inhale and threw his head back, howling into the empty night sky until his lungs burned and the familiar chorus of coyote howls picked up after him. A brilliant, rancorous cacophony of animalistic freedom. It was ugly, pitched to hurt his ears, and so beautiful it brought tears to his eyes. 

He wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt and hiccuped in small breaths as he found his way to sit on the cinderblock steps. Filled in. Painted white. He dared a glance to the back of the house where the metal barrel firepit and been and bit back another wave of tears when he realized they’d paved it and made it a concrete patio with a pair of navy blue deck chairs and a Hawaiian shirt clad lawn gnome.  
Keith kicked over the lawn gnome on his way inside.

It was so unfair. That was the only thought echoing in his pounding head as he stumbled towards the two tiny bedrooms. The cosmic unfairness of it all. This had been where they lived. This had been his home his whole entire life. Where his dad and his mom lived before Keith was even born. Where is dad pretended he didn’t cry while holding her photograph when Keith was supposed to be in bed. Where he came home smelling like smoke and always told Keith how proud he was that he’d microwaved dinner all by himself. Where he’s been when the police arrived to tell him that his father had died in the line of duty. Where he’d punched holes in the walls and then fixed them again, years later when he came back after aging out of the system with nothing but a trash bag full of clothes, the keys to the front door, and an ache he never knew how to erase. Where he’d brought back Shiro after that terrible first date at the drive in movie theater and he’s tried so hard not to think about how weird it was to have sex in his dad’s old bed. Where Shiro moved in after he graduated. Where they bickered over paperwork, over money, over what he was and wasn’t allowed to fix, over what flaws were too sentimental to let go of. 

The squeaky floorboard that every time Shiro walked over it and said “We really should fix that” it reminded Keith of how his father had done the exact same thing every single day. 

The odd edge of the counter that Keith always bumped his hip on and first his dad, then later Shiro, would tell him to be careful. 

Every imperfection that made this place home. That had made Shiro become his home so easily. That made his dad easier to let go of, because with these memories built in wood and stone it was almost like he never left in the first place. 

Every imperfection that saw how imperfect he was and accepted it without question.

Shiro had never been able to see that. How the flaws made this place so much more than the sum of its parts. How Keith’s flaws were just the same- just broken parts of the broken person but still so much better and more real for being there and for defying mathematics to become something, someone, more. 

Keith crawled into the too-big bed, still on the same wall of the bedroom but taking up absolutely all the floorspace. He was so tired. So dizzy. He knew he shouldn’t be here, should never have been here, but he was so so… tired. He’s just stay here a little while longer.  
\---

Large, firm hands shook him awake. “Keith! Keith!” The large hands said, strained and frantic. Keith grumbled and pushed the hands away, though the sudden movement made his stomach lurch and he opened his eyes, sitting up to try and hold himself together. The hands held him tight, like he might fall apart without them. He just might. And when he looked through blurry eyes to one, calloused, then the other, metal, he teared up again. 

“Shiro-” He choked out, finally looking his fiance in the eyes and seeing the worry and relief that was pooled there. 

“Keith.” He replied, voice so impossibly soft as he shepherded him into his arms. “I was so worried. No one knew where you were, and you weren’t answering your phone. Then I came here and I saw the glass-” His voice pitched. “The blood.”

Keith hummed sleepily, “M’alright.” He flopped back in Shiro’s arms, showing him the scabbing, dry bloody hand. “See?”

Shiro hissed through his teeth. “Baby.” He crooned, taking the hand and bringing the knuckles gingerly to his lips. 

The sting was so good. Keith probably deserved it too. He worried Shiro so much, fought him every step of the way about selling the house, found new things to fight about when they stopped fighting about the house-

“Baby, what’s wrong?” 

Keith blinked back to the present. Sluggish mind trying to piece together everything that was wrong about all of this. “They…” His voice croaked. “They painted the walls.”

Shiro sat cross legged on the bed in front of him. “Yes.” He said, innumerably patient. “Buyers like fresh paint. Wood walls aren’t really what is in style right now.”

Keith wrinkled his nose. “They paved a patio where the fire barrel was.”

“People like patios.”

“They fixed the hole in the wall.”

“You can’t sell a house with holes in the wall, Keith.”

Keith’s blood boiled. “I don’t want to sell the house at all, Shiro!” He snapped, a little too toothy, a little too loud.

Shiro froze, eyes wide and rattled in a way that sobered Keith instantly. Tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he curled his knees up to his chest and held a sob captive in his ribcage. “I-” He pawed at his face with the sleeve of his shirt, trying to voice it aloud only letting the dam holding the waterworks crack even more. “I can’t, Shiro. I just can’t.”  
Shiro shifted on the bed, Keith looked up expecting to see him leaving but instead saw him moving closer to pull him to his chest. The dam broke and tears fell freely, sobs rattling his whole body like a coffee tin. “I- I know you h-hate this place. It’s old and it’s broken and it’s terrible and I know that, Shiro but it’s MINE. It’s mine and it’s perfect and it’s ours and it’s my dad’s and it’s-” He shoved himself away holding him at arm’s length as he stared him down. “Shiro it’s ME. This place is me. It’s part of me, it’s my home and I can’t leave it. I just can’t.” He hung his head, slumping into Shiro’s arms, voice shivering and quiet. “I’m sorry Takashi, but I can’t.”

Shiro held him. Silent for the longest time. Keith shook, waiting for what he knew would come. The straw that broke the camel’s back and pulled rings given in gladness from fingers and left him alone all over again. The straw he’d tried so hard not to let break them. 

“Ok.” Shiro breathed. And Keith flinched like he’d struck him. 

Shiro rubbed a hand over his back, slow and soothing. “We’ll need to call the realtor and tell him to take the house off the market.”

Keith froze. “What?”

“We should call the sublet and tell them we’ll be moving out soon. And call the home staging company too to have them take the furniture back.”

Keith sat up, holding himself steady with firm hands gripping Shiro’s shoulders. “Shiro, what?”

Shiro held Keith’s face cupped in gentle hands, eyes warm and serious as he spoke with conviction. “Keith, if this is your home then this is my home. If you say stay I’ll stay, if you say sell then I’ll sell. But I would never, ever, make you do something you really, truly don’t want to do. If I had known how strongly you felt about this place I would never have pushed you to sell in the first place.” He kissed the top of Keith’s head, pulling him close. “I am so, so sorry, baby.”

Keith choked on a sob, falling into Shiro’s arms limp and overwhelmed and happy. 

Shiro muttered into his hair, “But, we are fixing the broken window.”

Keith laughed through his nose. “Only if we keep the doorknob dent.”

Shiro chuckled, “I think I can live with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @frozenbullies - shout at me there. I'm friendly I promise. I just scream at the void and make dumb things. 
> 
> I welcome short and long notes, <3 as extra kudos, and the like.
> 
> Fic inspired by The Old Apartment by the Barenaked Ladies  
> ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ggJS0p-QQc&list=RD8ggJS0p-QQc&start_radio=1 )


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